I rose to my feet in the greatest confusion.
"Madame," I stammered, "I come to my knees no earlier than the rest of your acquaintance. Only being country-bred, I do it with the less discretion."
She laughed with a charming friendliness which lifted me somewhat out of my humiliation.
"The adroitness of the recovery, Mr. Buckler," she said, "more than atones for the maladresse of the attack."
"Nay," I protested, with what may well have appeared excessive earnestness, "the simile does me some injustice, for it hints of an antagonism betwixt you and me."
She glanced at me with some surprise and more amusement in her eyes.
"Are not all men a woman's antagonists?" she said lightly.
But to me it seemed an ill-omened beginning. There was something too apposite in her chance phrase. I remembered, besides, that I had stumbled to the ground in much the same way before her husband, and I bethought me what had come of the slip.
'Twas but for a little, however, that these gloomy forebodings possessed me, and I retired to the outer edge of the throng, whence I could observe her motions and gestures undisturbed. And with a growing contentment I perceived that ever and again her eyes would stray towards me, and she would drop some question into Elmscott's ear.
The Countess wore, I remember, a gown of purple velvet fronted with yellow satin, which to my eyes hung a trifle heavily upon her young figure and so emphasized its slenderness, imparting even to her neck and head a certain graceful fragility. The rich colour of her hair was hidden beneath a mask of powder after the fashion, and below it her face shone pale, pale indeed as when I saw her last, but with a wonderful clarity and pureness of complexion, so that as she spoke the blood came and went very prettily about her cheeks and temples. The two attributes, however, which I noted with the greatest admiration were her eyes and voice. For it seemed to me well-nigh beyond belief that the eyes which I now saw flashing with so lively a fire were the same which had stared vacantly into mine at Lukstein Castle, and that the voice which I now heard musical with all the notes of laughter was that which had sent the shrill, awful scream tearing the night.